Larry stared at her, amazed. "What are you talking about?"
"It's Harold," she said, "and I'm afraid. I haven't told Stu. I've been ashamed. Keeping the diary was so dumb ... and now Stu... he actually likes Harold... everybody in the Free Zone likes Harold, including you." She uttered a laugh which was choked with tears. "After all, he was your... your spirit-guide on the way out here, wasn't he?"
"I'm not tracking this very well," Larry said slowly. "Can you tell me what it is you're afraid of?"
"That's just it - I don't really know." She looked at him, her eyes wet with tears. "I think I'd better tell you what I can, Larry. I have to talk to someone. God knows I just can't keep it inside anymore, and Stu... Stu's maybe not the person who should hear. At least, not the first one."
"Go ahead, Fran. Shoot."
So she told him, beginning with the day in June that Harold had driven into the driveway of her Ogunquit home in Roy Brannigan's Cadillac. As she talked, the last bright daylight changed to a bluish shade. The lovers in the park began to drift away. A thin rind of moon rose. In the high-rise condominium on the far side of Canyon Boulevard, a few Coleman gaslamps had come on. She told him about the sign on the barn roof and how she had been sleeping when Harold risked his life to put her name on the bottom. About meeting Stu in Fabyan, and about Harold's shrill get-away-from-my-bone reaction to Stu. She told him about her diary, and about the thumbprint in it. By the time she finished, it was past nine o'clock and the crickets were singing. A silence fell between them and Fran waited apprehensively for Larry to break it. But he seemed lost in thought.
At last he said, "How sure are you about that fingerprint? In your own mind are you positive it was Harold's?"
She only hesitated a moment. "Yes. I knew it was Harold's print the first time I saw it."
"That barn he put the sign on," Larry said. "You remember the night I met you I said I'd been up in it? And that Harold had carved his initials on a beam in the loft?"
"Yes."
"It wasn't just his initials. It was yours, too. In a heart. The kind of thing a lovesick little boy would do on his school desk."
She put her hands over her eyes and wiped them. "What a mess," she said huskily.
"You're not responsible for Harold Lauder's actions, keed." He took her hand in both of his and held it tightly. He looked at her. "Take it from me, the original dipstick, oilslick, and drippy dick. You can't hold it against yourself. Because if you do..." His grip tightened to a degree where it became painful, but his face remained soft. "If you do, you really will go mad. It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's."
He took his hand away and they were quiet for a time.
"You think Harold bears Stu a killing grudge?" he said at last. "You really think it's that deep?"
"Yes," she said. "I really think that's a possibility. Maybe the whole committee. But I don't know what - "
His hand fell on her shoulder and gripped it hard, stilling her. In the darkness his posture had changed, his eyes had widened. His lips moved soundlessly.
"Larry? What - "
"When he went downstairs," Larry muttered. "He went down to get a corkscrew or something."
"What? "
He turned toward her slowly, as if his head was on a rusty hinge. "You know," he said, "there just might be a way to resolve all this. I don't guarantee it, because I didn't look in the book, but... it makes such beautiful sense... Harold reads your diary and not only gets an earful but an idea. Hell, he might have even been jealous that you thought of it first. Didn't all the best writers keep journals?"
"Are you saying Harold's got a diary?"
"When he went down to the basement, the day I brought the wine, I was looking around his living room. He said he was going to put in some chrome and leather, and I was trying to figure out how it would look. And I noticed this loose stone on the hearth - "
"YES! " she yelled, so loudly that he jumped. "The day I snuck in... and Nadine Cross came... I sat on the hearth... I remember that loose stone." She looked at Larry again. "There it is again. As if something had us by the nose, was leading us to it..."
"Coincidence," he said, but he sounded uneasy.
"Is it? We were both in Harold's house. We both noticed the loose stone. And we're both here now. Is it coincidence?"
"I don't know."
"What was under that stone?"
"A ledger," he said slowly. "At least, that was the word stamped on the cover. I didn't look in it. At the time I thought it could just as easily have belonged to the previous owner of the house as to Harold. But if it did, wouldn't Harold have found it? We both noticed the loose stone. So let's say he finds it. Even if the guy who lived there before the flu had filled it up with little secrets - the amount he cheated on his taxes, his sex fantasies about his daughter, I don't know what all - those secrets wouldn't have been Harold's secrets. Do you see that?"